White House postpones meeting on Paris climate deal

A White House spokeswoman said the meeting was postponed due to the president's travel schedule. (AP Photo/Jim Cole, File)

The White House scrapped a much-anticipated meeting Tuesday to decide whether it would withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement.

A White House spokeswoman said the meeting was postponed due to the president's travel schedule and because some of the participants slated for the meeting are accompanying him to Wisconsin on Tuesday.

White House spokeswoman Kelly Love emphasized that the meeting was being postponed, not canceled.

She told the Washington Examiner that the meeting would be rescheduled for another day, but could not say if that means later this week.

Love said a decision on a new date for the meeting had not been made.

The White House has said that a decision on whether to exit the Paris agreement would not come until the end of next month. Tuesday's meeting was meant to form a consensus among factions in the White House on what the decision would be.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner want the U.S. to remain as a party to the deal. Others in his Cabinet, such as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, want to pull out of the Paris accord altogether.

Opponents of the 2015 Paris deal used the Tuesday event to start a petition and ad campaign to urge Trump to leave the agreement.

The conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute launched an online ad on Tuesday that presses Trump to keep his campaign promise to exit the deal.

Democrats, however, used the meeting to demonstrate solidarity with the Paris deal in combating global warming.